A few days after, various members of the family arrived at the Castle Farm, with the intention of deciding what was to be done. An arrangement had been partially made with a young farmer of the district, who was ready to enter upon the remainder of the lease, and whom the factor on the part of the Duke was ready to accept as replacing Mrs. Murray in the responsibilities of the tenancy. This, of course, everybody felt was the natural step to be taken, and it left the final question as to how the old lady herself was to be disposed of, clear and unembarrassed. Even Edgar himself was not sufficiently Quixotic to suppose that Mrs. Murray’s feelings and pride should be so far consulted as to keep up the farm for her amusement, while she was no longer able to manage its manifold concerns.
Mr. and Mrs. Campbell arrived first in their gig, which was seated for four persons, and which, indeed, Mr. Campbell called a phaeton. Their horse was a good steady, sober-minded brown horse, quite free from any imaginativeness or eccentricity, plump and sleek, and well-groomed; and the whole turnout had an appearance of comfort and well-being. They brought with them a young man whom Edgar had not yet seen, a Dr. Charles Murray, from the East-country, the son of Mrs. Murray’s eldest son, who had arrived that morning by the steamboat at Loch Arroch Head. From Greenock by the same conveyance—but not in Mr. Campbell’s gig—came James Murray, another of the old lady’s sons, who was “a provision merchant” in that town, dealing largely in hams and cheeses, and full of that reverential respect for money which is common with his kind. Lastly there arrived from Kildarton on the other side of Loch Long, a lady who had taken the opportunity, as she explained to Edgar, of indulging her young people with a picnic, which they were to hold in a little wooded dell, round the corner of the stubble field, facing Loch Long, while she came on to join the family party, and decide upon her mother’s destiny. This was Mrs. MacKell, Mrs. Murray’s youngest daughter, a good-looking, high-complexioned woman of forty-five, the wife of a Glasgow “merchant” (the phrase is wide, and allows of many gradations), who had been living in sea-side quarters, or, as her husband insisted on expressing it, “at the saut water,” in the pleasant sea-bathing village of Kildarton, opposite the mouth of Loch Arroch. The boat which deposited her at the little landing-place belonging to the Castle Farm, was a heavy boat of the district, filled with a bright-coloured and animated party, and provided with the baskets and hampers necessary for their party of pleasure. Mrs. MacKell stood on the bank, waving her hand to them as they hoisted the sail and floated back again round the yellow edge of the stubble field.
“Mind you keep your warm haps on, girls, and don’t wet your feet,” she called to them; “and oh, Andrew, my man, for mercy’s sake take care of that awful sail!”
This adjuration was replied to by a burst of laughter in many voices, and a “Never fear, mother,” from Andrew; but Mrs. MacKell shook her good-looking head as she accepted Edgar’s hand to ascend the slope. All the kindred regarded Edgar with a mixture of curiosity and awe, and it was, perhaps, a slight nervous shyness in respect to this stranger, so aristocratical-looking, as Mrs. MacKell expressed herself, which gave a little additional loudness and apparent gaiety to that excellent woman’s first address.
“I’m always afraid of those sails. They’re very uncanny sort of things when a person does not quite understand the nature of our lochs. I suppose, Mr. Edgar, you’re in that case?” said Mrs. MacKell, looking at him with an ingratiating smile.
He was her nephew, there could be no doubt of it, and she had a right to talk to him familiarly; but at the same time he was a fine gentleman and a stranger, and made an impression upon her mind which was but inadequately counter-balanced by any self-assurances that he was “just an orphan lad—no better—not to say a great deal worse off than our own bairns.” Such representations did not affect the question as they ought to have done, when this strange personage, “no better, not to say a great deal worse” than themselves, stood with his smile which made them slightly uncomfortable, before them. It was the most open and genial smile, and in former times Edgar had been supposed a great deal too much disposed to place himself on a level with all sorts of people; but now-a-days his look embarrassed his humble relations. There was a certain amusement in it, which bore no reference to them, which was entirely at himself, and the quaintly novel position in which he found himself, but which nevertheless affected them, nobody could have told why. He was not laughing at them, respectablest of people. They could not take offence, neither could they divine what he was laughing at; but the curious, whimsical, and often rueful amusement which mingled with many much less agreeable feelings, somehow made itself felt and produced an effect upon which he had never calculated. It was something they did not understand, and this consciousness partially irritated, partially awed these good people, who felt that the new man in their midst was a being beyond their comprehension. They respected his history and his previous position, though with a little of that characteristic contempt which mingles so strangely in Scotland with many old prejudices in favour of rank and family; they respected more honestly and entirely his little property, the scraps of his former high estate which made him still independent; but above all they now respected, though with some irritation, what seemed to them the unfathomableness of his character, the lurking smile in his eyes. It confirmed the superiority which imagination already acknowledged.
“I have not had much experience of the lochs,” said Edgar, following with his eyes the clumsy but gay boat, with its cargo of laughter, and frankly gay, if somewhat loud, merry-making.
Mrs. MacKell saw his look and was gratified.
“You’ll not know which are your cousins among so many,” she said; “and, indeed, the girls have been plaguing me to write over and ask you to come. They were all away back in Glasgow when my mother took ill, and just came down last week on my account. It’s late for sea-bathing quarters in Scotland; and, indeed, when they took it into their heads about this pic-nic, I just raged at them. A pic-nic in October, and on the loch! But when children set their hearts on a thing the mother’s aye made to give way; and they had to be kept quiet, you see, while my mother was ill, not knowing how it might end.”
“That is true,” said Edgar; “otherwise, so far as my poor grandmother is concerned, this cannot be called a very joyful occasion.”